The Moore brothers stormed the freestyle snowmobile scene four years ago in Aspen, making the transition from years of ATV racing to snowmobile flipping after a mere month of practice in their backyard foam pit in Krum, Texas. They'd never ridden snowmobiles before that balmy December in the town northwest of Dallas.

"We got a little practice and came here and did what we do best: Wing it," says the 23-year-old Colten.

"Took a bronze medal after 30 days of practice," Caleb, 25, says of his 2010 X Games debut, a feat he repeated in 2011 with freestyle bronze and best trick silver earned before a crowd filled with 30-plus Moore kin. "It's been history from there. It's been a great ride."

But Thursday night, both were injured and knocked out of the freestyle finals. Caleb came up short on a backflip, digging his sled's skis into the snow and slamming the landing. The 450-pound snowmobile bounced into his head as he tumbled. He was knocked out briefly, suffering a concussion.

"He is OK. Got knocked out but is awake and answering questions," said Moore spokeswoman Chelsea Lawson a few minutes after the crash.

Minutes later, Colten was injured in the same spot as the sled landed on his right hip. He was taken to Aspen Valley Medical Center.

Injuries are part of life for the Moore brothers. Colten was only 12 years old when he broke his femurs and pelvis while quad racing. Caleb had a lengthy list of injuries even before Thursday night's mishap. He was knocked unconscious and injured his ankles after the 2010 X Games during an exhibition in Costa Rica. Last year, Caleb took bronze while he was recovering from a broken pelvis and after breaking his tailbone during practice.

The Polaris-sponsored riders were searching for their avenue to fame in 2010. Throttling and flipping quad ATVs wasn't really delivering.

Photos: X Games at Aspen, Jan. 24

"We wanted to get to the Summer X Games, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen. There are just not enough riders at that top level who can backflip a quad," says their father, Wade Moore, who built a foam pit for his sons in 2006 as the duo developed ATV freestyle trickery. "I was trying to figure out how to get to television for more publicity and snowmobiles were already on television. I said, 'I think y'all can make the transition.' "

And it wasn't a breeze breaking into the snowmobile freestyle scene four years ago.

"There was no one on quads doing what we do, and there were a lot of guys on sleds doing more than we were doing," Colten says, "so it was definitely a challenge to keep up with what was already going down."

With wheels on their sleds' skis and a carpeted ramp, the Moore brothers have used their Texas training ground to prove they are no one-hit wonders in the snowy X Games. Last year's gold-bronze performance established the Moores as bona fide competitors in snowmobile freestyle and likely the only Winter X Games medalists hailing from snow-starved Texas.

It's not easy to sledneck in Texas. Snowmobiles are built to rev high, run hot and cool with wintery weather. In Texas, the machines overheat after one jump. So the Moore brothers use their foam pit to practice their biggest tricks, hitting the floaty, backflipping grabs and no-hander landings that earn medals at Buttermilk.

On a whim in 2011, they thrilled the X Games crowd when they backflipped their snowmobile together on the same machine, earning a whopping zero points from the judges.

The brothers spend their year traveling to motorsports events where they provide the intermission entertainment on their ATVs with a progression of tricks culminating in backflips. Next weekend, Caleb planned to perform in France and Colten in San Antonio. The brothers don't actually land snowmobiles on snow until they arrive for practice at the X Games, their only competition of the season.

"If you are confident in the pit and you are nailing it over and over again, day after day, you get to a landing and you just have to ... picture a foam pit in front of you," Colten says.

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